Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Spector's Trade Rumours notes today that Swedish tabloid Expressen is reporting former Oilers defenceman Daniel Tjarnqvist has signed a two-year contract with AK Bars Kazan of the Russian Super League worth around $2-million (or 45,000 kroner per day, as Expressen points out for some reason). While this is technically Oilers news, it is also boring Oilers news, as it was painfully obvious that Tjarnqvist — or Shaggy, as he came to be known during the 37 games he managed to play last year — was not coming back to Edmonton after his dismal season and SURPRISE, the market for middling, oft-injured fifth defencemen in the NHL proved to be non-existent this off-season. So off to Russia he goes. Yawn.

And now, on an unrelated note, here are TSN's top 10 greatest goals of all time — or, for any Swedish people duped into reading the site by the headline to this post, Sportsnet's topp tio NHL målarna om alla tid. Enjoy! (Hat tip to Eric McErlain for digging this video back up on AOL Fanhouse yesterday.)

I noticed Souray as well, and the lazy ass way he doesn't even try to correct his defensive...how do you say...gaffe.

Listen up folks, we are going to suck this year, and suck hard. In that respect we will wish the Oilers were our girlfriend (is that in poor taste?)

We won't score that often, and we'll get scored on in nut-crushingly embarrassing ways that will make us grind our molars into chunks of useless bone out of sheer futility and frustration.

I tried going positive earlier in the off-season, thinking that maybe a few more trades or solid acquistions were in the pipe, but nope. This is it.

No matter who makes it through training camp, this is still a team with no identity beyond, "make them not tank as much as last year"...and even that is in doubt.

We'll see growth, we'll see our team make some enormously astounding plays because let's face it, we really do have some talent, but in the mean it's not going to be pretty. In fact it'll be downright ugly.

Oilers, you're not going to be my girlfriend after all, I'm dumping you for...I don't know, hell...Colorado? We'll still keep in touch, though.

so souray is a crap defenseman because he didn't stop one of the TOP TEN GOALS OF ALL TIME?? stop the histrionics! he may not be the best at his D game, but put him behind Stoll and Pisani and that +/- will calm the fuck down.

We won't miss him because we saw precious little of him. Middling 5th defenceman? That's ridiculous. When Tjarn was healthy he was an excellent defender in all situations, and would be a quality #3 guy on any team. When healthy, of course. Tj at 2mil v. Tarnstrom at 2? No contest.

Tjarny looked like top 4 for sure when he played. And he could chip in a few points too. But his pubic bone had other plans.

And I enjoyed the Buffalo color guy, "Now that's just not fair."

And Souray gaffed, and the puck was in the net before he realized WTF had happened, but after seeing Savard make Tikkanen & Lowe look goofy proves that anyone can be embarrassed...only one would hope Souray wouldn't do it so much.

In other news: Edmonton's competition just got a whole lot better, with Mike Peca signing on with Columbus. Nearly everyone around the Oilers in the West have taken very big steps to improve their team (Vancouver, Colorado, Columbus, Calgary, etc), while Edmonton has been spinning its wheels by signing serious liabilities like Souray and Penner.

Memory has been proven to be a highly dubious thing, but I remember that the Oilers were on a big skid around this time, and that Fuhr was using new pads, which he later complained were "too light" and discarded a few games later. He sure looks bad on that play.

Losing streaks were an unusual, irksome thing back then: all too clearly, I remember being incensed by a 5-0 Nordiques loss on the road, which was incomprehensible at the time.

If anyone's down with the html and knows how I can expand the size of the post and header boxes while still keep those rounded corners, and also how to make the background colour on this template not seafoam green, please contact me at the email below. Worst background colour in history.

while Edmonton has been spinning its wheels by signing serious liabilities like Souray and Penner.

If you compare rosters going into the season to rosters at the end of last season, the Oilers are maybe the most improved team in the conference (as expressed in percentage). Of course, they could have improved by 100% and still miss the playoff, because they were that bad, but there is absolutely no case to be made that they haven't improved.

And how could Penner possibly be considered a liability? You can say that the Oilers paid much too steep a price to get him (although the more I think about it, the less I agree with that statement - in the third and fourth years of his contract, he's going to be a bargain) but serious liability? Please.

I don't think the Oilers will make the playoff this year, and if they do it will almost certainly be a first round exit (barring some 2006-esque deadline deals, of course). But you're overstating things absurdly.